A new report from the United States Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) claimed that the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is nearly “indistinguishable” from the Chinese mainland, criticizing its approach to national security laws and accusing officials of “zealously” implementing them.

This is problematic for multiple reasons. First, to offer necessary context, US Congressional committees are not known for their impartiality, adherence to facts, balanced tone or fair approach. Instead, the culture of the US Congress is known for its weaponization of mass hysteria, use of exaggerated talking points, opportunistic misinformation and routine drama that dictates the country’s politics as a whole.

Congress tends to target things in a distinctively aggressive manner purely for political posturing, and on the issue of China this is a huge problem where reasoned perspectives have essentially been shut down in favor of pushing paranoia and fear in every possible angle. Thus, as an institution, it is heavy on style but low on substance in the actual value or worth of what its members tend to say. This is especially so in the extremely biased select committees that exist purely to adhere to the political orthodoxy of the time and have no interest in a facts-based approach. In other words, it is all a perpetual game of who can shout the loudest.

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So is Hong Kong really indistinguishable from the mainland because of the element of national security laws? This claim itself is an absurd exaggeration. It is a typical American narrative to claim that the imposition of a national security regime is detrimental to the “autonomy” of Hong Kong, which by their definition, must extend to a Western ideological vision for liberal-democracy that allows complete chaos and destruction to go unchecked throughout the city in a way that — ironically — would not be tolerated under their own laws. Thus any response by the legitimate authorities is derided as an act of “oppression”.

However, the reality is that Hong Kong maintains its own autonomous institutions, in line with the “one country, two systems” principle, a framework that sees the special administrative region operate its own economic, legal and social systems. The national security regime has, contrary to the narrative that is being pushed in Washington, changed none of this. Of course, part of such criticism routinely insinuates that “China is taking over Hong Kong” or “China has influence in Hong Kong”, which attempts to create the impression that recent developments in the city are something sinister and illegitimate. These are baseless arguments that overlook the premise that although Hong Kong enjoys a high degree of autonomy, it is still constitutionally part of China.

Although the city differs on many matters of governance, it is not “exclusive”, which feeds into the logic of the separatist argument by implying that China ought to have no say, no power or stake in the running of its own lawful territory; or that any cooperation between the the HKSAR and the mainland is somehow “bad” and thus implies “the end of Hong Kong” based on the ideological pre-disposition of some Westerners, thus leading to claims that it is “just another Chinese city”, as if failing to live up to Western expectations must equate to the total demise of everything unique and distinctive about the HKSAR. This is an ideological fallacy, jumping to misleading conclusions purely on the question of national security.

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In reality, the mainland has a vested interest in sustaining Hong Kong as a global financial center with a unique free market system, which provides a gateway to global enterprise and capital, and which acts as an important driver for the country’s economic development. However, contrary to what the denigrators attempt to assert, to sustain the economic success of Hong Kong requires local stability and a robust national security regime which has good reasons to be vigilant of foreign interference following the events of the past few years. You do not hear of Western media and politicians picking fault with an even more stringent national security regime in Singapore, which is ironic given it is sometimes presented as an “alternative” to Hong Kong.

Thus, we can only come to the conclusion that any claim of Hong Kong becoming “indistinguishable” from the Chinese mainland is an exaggeration made in bad faith. Instead, US politicians seem eager to try and disrupt the HKSAR whenever possible as part of their broader geopolitical goal of undermining China. They have long since decided that Hong Kong should only be allowed to succeed if it exists on the terms and conditions set by the West, and thus be “distinct from China” altogether, which has led to a torrent of propaganda berating its national security regime as some kind of dystopia.

The author is a British political and international-relations analyst.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.